Home >  Archive >  2012 >  April >  24

Previous / Next

McLuhan was as prescient as Postel
By Dave Winer on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 12:25 PM.
A picture named pigOnTv.gifFred Wilson really started an interesting thread.  permalink
It continues over on Rex Hammock's blog.  permalink
He says that everything is programming. That you have TV itself and you have shows. People may have thought I Love Lucy or Johnny Carson were bigger than a TV show, but in the end they weren't. Are the companies Fred helps get started really companies, or are they really shows? To which I said -- they're rock bands.  permalink
But there's more to it. permalink
Sometimes things that are TV shows have features which are sucked down into the medium. It's how there's a continuity between the TV of Lucy and the TV of Linsanity (which is thoroughly captivating TV, even though Lin himself has been sidelined). The platform is shifting and adopting features from its programming. permalink
Podcasting, RSS, blogging, YouTube, I would argue Angry Birds and Twitter -- all become part of what the Internet is, but they started out as programming. Before that Compuserve, MCI Mail, AOL. AppleLink. Craig's List. MySpace. And on and on. Each came out as a program, then became part of the platform.  permalink
A picture named trickyDick.gifLook at how magazines as a platform have changed. It used to be a gatekeeper model. Now lists like Time's 100 most influential are revealing because they have become jokes, anachronisms. Why did we care who influenced the editors of Time? Becuase that was the only path to fame. Now there are so many other paths to fame.  permalink
Postel said be liberal in what you understand and conservative in what you say. You could think of that as the law of platforms as much as it is about interop. permalink
McLuhan said The Medium Is The Message. It's really the same idea. permalink
Said another way... permalink
We're paving cow paths.  permalink
This site contributes to the scripting.com community river.


© Copyright 1997-2012 Dave Winer. Last update: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 12:33 PM Eastern. Last build: 4/30/2012; 7:15:02 AM. "It's even worse than it appears."

RSS feed for Scripting News

Previous / Next